Poems & Other Writings

Final Thoughts

As you may have gathered, this book is in many ways like a “sealed” box, but it is not welded shut, or made of steel.  It is only sealed in that, like a cave, you have to find your way into it, and then also like a cave, to see all of the passageways, you have to explore.

If you’ve gotten this far, perhaps that in some ways fits your experience.  On the pages that follow, you’ll find an eclectic collection of affirmations, poems, and other writings, with little in the way of explanations, but together they may form a picture in your right brain of where we came from and where we’re headed, as is the case for all that exists in the earlier pages.

In a secondary way, this book and the sources to which it points are a “box” for ourselves, to be given to those we treasure as well, especially those we expect to see in the distant as well as not-too-distant future.  At an earlier time, as suggested in the first part of the story, we might have imagined that this would be by way of reanimation from a state of cryonic suspension.

At that time, we would have described ourselves as advocates for “life extension”, with the focus on saving individual lives, but with great uncertainty about what kind of future we might wake up in.  Now, as implied by everything after Chapter 27 as well as comments in the Postscript and elsewhere, what seems most central is foreseeing and building toward the kind of future will emerge from the advance of technology we see unfolding so rapidly.

If the extropic momentum of the present continues to unfold without a terrible disruption of civilization, we foresee that the continuation of individual identities is highly probable, with or without cryonics.

The most puzzling and challenging questions, from our present perspectives, revolve around how civilization will evolve?  Will it progress in the positive way that Paolo Soleri foresaw in “The City in the Image of Man”, or will Humankind curl downward in a catastrophic way?

 Can a sufficient number of people see the need for a “SuperCooperators” society, as Martin Nowak suggests in his book (of that title), so a network such as Terasem thinks vital can become a reality?  Or will some hangover of dog-eat-dog natural selection stand in the way, turning the clock of human civilization back or destroying it?

All of these, as suggested in that note Fritz and Laura left behind for Frank and Lois, are “great mysteries” to us.  At this point, all we can do is collect the insights we have found along the way and share them with you as a mixture of fiction and fact.  Fact is unfolding so much more quickly than fiction that it is sometimes difficult to see which is out in front.

So, turn the page, and you will find a patchwork quilt of writings, more suggesting spirit of life than analysis, in some cases delving into images of how two people could find so much joy in each other as to suggest they might go on together forever, in other cases pointing to all of the adventures that may lie in wait for us, that we cannot even begin to imagine.

.

Thanks for joining us, so far… We invite you to…

“Come with us… into Tomorrow!”

Live long; Enjoy every moment;

Be thankful you are alive – Always!                                  

Affirmations

Recent (May-August, 2011)

I pledge myself to higher states of awareness in every moment, acting on principles versus instinctual evolutionary drives, uplifting the spirits of others in every way possible, by what I say and do. 

In Poetic Form

 To myself, I now pledge,

My awareness, shall I edge,

Ever upward, ‘till it finds,

It’s touch-ing all others’ minds.

Whatever I do, I now choose,

To act on principles and use,

My awareness to detect,

Negatives that might infect,

Anything I ever do,

Or ever say, that might lead to,

Lessening joy in others’ lives,

Doing nothing that deprives,

Anyone of love of life,

Anything that causes strife,

Promoting, Universally,

Joyful Immortality.

Not so recent (June, 2003)

 Further back (May 1988)

(Cameron Rockwell ~ pen name of mine)

(Way back)

I Am A Child

by Fred Chamberlain - April 1970

[Reprinted from Extropy #5 - Winter Issue, 1990]

I am a child - among infants who call themselves adults and imagine that their years of growth have passed. I will remain a child because to mature is to prepare for death, and my goal is life.  The purpose of life is survival. The weed and the Sequoia both survive, but somehow there is a difference. Man, being self-conscious, can work to alter his nature. The man with the stature of a weed can seek to become like a Sequoia. The man with the stature of a Sequoia can seek to become anything he can comprehend. But the infant who calls himself an adult seeks nothing.

What interaction do I seek with regard to others? Besides exchanging my work for theirs, I seek to help them grow. I will use my strength to maximum advantage, to increase the growth of others to the greatest extent for each minute of my time invested.   I do not seek to help those who do not need my help - perhaps I need theirs. I do not seek to help those  who do not want my help - there are too many others who do want it. I do not seek to help those whose declared purpose is my destruction. Survival does not lie that way. I do not seek to teach first grade if I am geared for teaching at a high school level. I seek most to help those who wish to deal with me freely, without coercion. Their growth can only increase the fruition of our relationship, and they do not threaten my existence or my freedom to choose my own values.   

Today, I swap apples for oranges. Tomorrow, perhaps I will trade the materials I mine from a planet's core for products manufactured in the corona of the Sun. Today I can help children to learn about the pitfalls of irrationality. Perhaps tomorrow I can help other children discover the full potential of symbolic logic.   

But beyond all, my goal is life. For the time being, I will fight biological aging, but - I will not become an adult; I will never mature; I am a child.

[Note:  The term “man” above is intended to include both sexes, particularly inasmuch as it may well turn out that women have higher leadership potential than men over the next several centuries, as a result of their greater natural capacities to nurture and network.]

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These are two of many poems from the early 1970’s, printed on an IBM Selectric typewriter and bound in a single-copy volume.  Scanned, they are now part of our “mindfiles”, but they give some sense of the thinking and feeling about  the possibilities for connectedness between two people that led to this book.

 Additional Contact Information

 In Second Life, we’re Kirsch and Alegria Greenwood, and Terasem Island is  our ‘home’.  Our two primary URL’s are lifepact.com and boundlesslife.com.

Also, you’re invited to visit us at

truthsofterasem.wordpress.com

for access to our podcasts and the

text-files used to record them.

HRG’s and AOC’s

If you’ve received this book as a gift from us with a note inside the front cover, or if your work is cited in any way here, we HRG [Honor, (do) Respect and (are) Grateful (to)] you.  We also honor, respect, and are grateful to many others to whom we’d have liked to have sent a copy or to have acknowledged in very specific way.  They’re the AOC’s!

AOC’s [Action-Oriented-Cryonicists] are people we know, would like to know, or may someday know, who have made an attempt to save a life by so simple an act as cooling the head of a loved one after death and calling a cryonics group, received training to carry out standbys, transports or cryoprotections, or have contributed to cryonics in some other positive way.  Many of these people have devoted a major part of their lives to saving those they love and care about.  They are our heros.

This book and its story may appear in some ways to be negative about or opposed to cryonics, but that is not at all the case.  AOC’s have grasped a vision that lives may become endless, full of joy and adventure, and have done something concrete about it, other than just talk.  They are very special to us, and it is largely for them that this book has been written.  In every way possible, we believe they deserve to survive.

These people have faced the end of their own lives and others’ lives they care about bravely and boldly, risking conflicts with their families and friends.  The ideas in this book may help them better consider all the options that are opening and help them survive into an endless future.  Brigadoon Destiny, Chapter 34, honors the outlook of those who feel that only biological reanimation will work for them.  We pledge that this goal will be achieved to whatever degree physical reality permits it, even if it means relocating them to the other side of the Milky Way Galaxy in the process.

The vision of Terasem stretches far beyond saving lives only by way cryonics or brain preservation, to include saving lives by information (mindfiles) alone, with or without DNA.  While the majority of those who transcend biology may do so in this way, largely due to difficulties of cost and accessibility, Terasem profoundly recognizes that the intricate arrangements of our neurological structures may represent a far more complete and accurate representation of memories and personalities than might be recoverable without them, and encourages both cryonics and/or brain preservation for those who find it accessible and affordable.

In our mindfiles with Terasem Movement Projects we have tried to spell out in far more detail, so that we may never forget them, these AOC’s, and why we place so much value on their lives.  We have not and will not ever forget how much we and others owe them, and it is for that reason if no other that we must do all that we can to encourage and support them in their own trips into the future.

Future savings-of-lives in every way possible, carried to logical limits in terms of Terasem’s goals, means saving as best we can the civilizations of all sentient species biologically evolved to the point of full consciousness.

Terasem defines this as being conscious of others compassionately, recognizing the need for adherence to logical ethics, in achieving the state so succinctly described by Terasem  as “Joyful Immortality”.

An approach to  this, “Geoethical Nanotechnology”, is described in detail in Terasem’s journal of that name.  A companion journal on personal cyberconsciousness is also published by Terasem.  See the below link, for papers on those subjects.  We think you’d enjoy them, in addition to listening to our podcasts (link just beneath biz-card above).

http://www.terasemjournals.org/

To survive the technological and cultural challenges we see on the horizon, we must forgive both ourselves and others for  handicaps imposed on us by biological evolution, including dog-eat-dog drives that underlie corruptions of all kinds ranging from Egyptian and Roman slaveries of the past to gender discriminations and economic exploitations of the present.  Corruption must be left behind.  This is what Chapter 27 and all that follows it are devoted to.

We must transcend biology and open many doors to endless futures of creativity and adventure that are now advancing in a compound-exponential way.  Failure to do so would be to oppose an extropic explosion on cosmic levels that now lifts us upward in every moment.

Back to the subject of acknowledgements and who we believe deserves them most, we are talking about the AOC’s (Action Oriented Cryonicists), who we honor, respect, and to whom we are grateful.  And, we also wish to recognize those who will ‘carry the ball’ for us all in the decades now to come.  To paraphrase the very end of the Acknowledgements section from the early part of this book:

I’m going to break with the usual traditions as to acknowledgements and end by acknowledging all of those who can understand the necessary principles and dedicate themselves to the application of them sufficiently to guide humanity safely through the many decades ahead, in which what Terasem calls “Geoethical Nanotechnology” will be our first line of defense, where most of those who are providing this level of guidance will do so by existing in forms Terasem calls “personal cyberconsciousness”.

Again… Come with us, into Tomorrow!

Boundless Life,

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